kbluck
28 Jul 03, 19:18
I did a little number-crunching.
Given the worst possible pK > 0 (1%), let's assign that to an M16A2. This means that any single burst fired by an M16A2 has a 1% chance of killing an enemy fire team.
Let's assume for a second that the pH is 100%. Based on my observations for desert terrain, that doesn't seem far off, as pretty much any shot gets at least a suppression result.
Further assuming that an M16A2 can generate 15 bursts per minute on average, we find that a single M16A2 will have about an aggregate 14% chance of killing the enemy fire team for each minute that it is firing. Add the second M16A2, and we find that a given fire team has about a 26% per minute to kill an enemy fire team.
Keep in mind that they are typically firing near the weapon's max effective range. This may seem poor accuracy for a firing range, but combat has been shown consistently to grossly degrade marksmanship, assuming you can train them well enough to reliably fire their weapons at all.
If we give them the weapons they *should* have, lets add a SAW to the mix. At 2% per burst and 20 bursts per minute, the SAW gunner will have an aggregate 33% per minute to kill a fire team by himself. Added to his teammates, that would be an overall 50% chance per firing team per minute.
Now, perhaps this is too high or too low. I'd have to dig up some more combat statistics to verify it. What numbers I have from Korea and Vietnam don't seem to contradict it. A couple of interesting titles on combat performance in Korea can be found at:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/cgi-bin/usamhi/DL/showdoc.pl?docnum=56
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/cgi-bin/usamhi/DL/showdoc.pl?docnum=57
Regardless, I'm pretty sure its a lot closer to accuracy than the present situation, which is:
A single M16A2 @ 33% per burst, 15 bursts per minute = 99.75% chance of a kill per minute. In fact, he has an 86% chance to kill in 20 seconds or less. The 2 M16A2s in a given fire team together have >80% chance to kill a fire team in just *two bursts* each, less than 10 seconds, which certainly lends credence to my complaint that targeted fire teams usually die within the first couple of bursts. Put another way, they have about a 2/3 chance to hit a man with any given burst, which is pretty darn good if you ask me. Even cops firing at much shorter ranges don't begin to approach that level of accuracy, generally runing about 4 shots per cop per incident with overall 10-20% hit rate. Machine guns, obviously, would be even worse. With MGs, you'll typically be hitting more than one man per burst on average.
Like I said: for all practical purposes, (fire at infantry) == (kill infantry) in v1.02
--- Kevin
Given the worst possible pK > 0 (1%), let's assign that to an M16A2. This means that any single burst fired by an M16A2 has a 1% chance of killing an enemy fire team.
Let's assume for a second that the pH is 100%. Based on my observations for desert terrain, that doesn't seem far off, as pretty much any shot gets at least a suppression result.
Further assuming that an M16A2 can generate 15 bursts per minute on average, we find that a single M16A2 will have about an aggregate 14% chance of killing the enemy fire team for each minute that it is firing. Add the second M16A2, and we find that a given fire team has about a 26% per minute to kill an enemy fire team.
Keep in mind that they are typically firing near the weapon's max effective range. This may seem poor accuracy for a firing range, but combat has been shown consistently to grossly degrade marksmanship, assuming you can train them well enough to reliably fire their weapons at all.
If we give them the weapons they *should* have, lets add a SAW to the mix. At 2% per burst and 20 bursts per minute, the SAW gunner will have an aggregate 33% per minute to kill a fire team by himself. Added to his teammates, that would be an overall 50% chance per firing team per minute.
Now, perhaps this is too high or too low. I'd have to dig up some more combat statistics to verify it. What numbers I have from Korea and Vietnam don't seem to contradict it. A couple of interesting titles on combat performance in Korea can be found at:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/cgi-bin/usamhi/DL/showdoc.pl?docnum=56
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/cgi-bin/usamhi/DL/showdoc.pl?docnum=57
Regardless, I'm pretty sure its a lot closer to accuracy than the present situation, which is:
A single M16A2 @ 33% per burst, 15 bursts per minute = 99.75% chance of a kill per minute. In fact, he has an 86% chance to kill in 20 seconds or less. The 2 M16A2s in a given fire team together have >80% chance to kill a fire team in just *two bursts* each, less than 10 seconds, which certainly lends credence to my complaint that targeted fire teams usually die within the first couple of bursts. Put another way, they have about a 2/3 chance to hit a man with any given burst, which is pretty darn good if you ask me. Even cops firing at much shorter ranges don't begin to approach that level of accuracy, generally runing about 4 shots per cop per incident with overall 10-20% hit rate. Machine guns, obviously, would be even worse. With MGs, you'll typically be hitting more than one man per burst on average.
Like I said: for all practical purposes, (fire at infantry) == (kill infantry) in v1.02
--- Kevin